Coronavirus News
Understanding African Markets During COVID-19
Sourced from iStock. We are living in unprecedented times. COVID-19 has swept throughout the world, and governments globally have taken drastic measures to stop the spread in an attempt to save lives. In February 2020, as African countries watched Asia and Europe begin the implementation of lockdown, a study by Survey54, an automated mobile-led data collection platform, found that approximately 80% of Africans interviewed felt almost immune to the virus as they were yet to hear of any confirmed cases on the continent. This did not last long and by Mid-March, lockdown procedures were initiated across Africa. Despite the swift response, lockdown came with many challenges that drastically affected a continent which heavily depends on the informal sector. With roughly 90% of Africans now conce...
Cashless and Contactless Payments Beyond COVID-19
The emergence of COVID-19 has made the need for digitising payments more critical than ever before and for this to be a success, electronic payments need to offer similar benefits to those afforded by cash. Globally, economies are in various stages of development having either started developing, replaced or are busy replacing daily batch payment systems with real-time systems that execute payments in seconds with the flexibility to meet the needs of the future digital economy. The drive towards digital payments and lowering the reliance on cash is not new to South Africa’s payments market. There are several mechanisms already in place to enable this and banks, card companies, fintechs and retailers are all involved in rolling out digital, non-touch payment mechanisms. Contactless cards us...
New IoT System Could Detect Future Virus Outbreaks
Sourced from Getty Images. IoT sensors that monitor body temperature in real-time and are implemented at a large scale could provide geolocation data that would allow potential quarantine areas to be rapidly identified. Through this, the idea is to shut down emerging viruses before a pandemic could take hold. IoT security firm WISeKey says it is working on such a solution. “Using the network of billions of interconnected smart IoT sensors, we can detect the spread of viruses by combining the anonymized digital identity with the behaviour of a person,” the firm says in a press release. Importantly, the company claims its solution can be fully secured and trusted. A question of privacy /* custom css */ .tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 a...
Hydroxychloroquine Trials for COVID-19 Suspended by WHO
Sourced from Getty Images. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it is pausing clinical trials on the use of the controversial malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat patients with COVID-19. This was one of four experimental treatments being investigated by the organization and has been under intense scrutiny for some time after it was championed by tech mogul Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. “The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, during a press briefing. This “Solidarity trial” is the WHO’s global investigation into experimental treatments for COVID-19 – including hyd...
Mining Sector Set to Lead Economic Recovery in Zambia
Sourced from Lusaka Times. Despite a challenging business environment in many sectors across the globe, Zambia’s wealth of natural resources continues to open the door for new investors and opportunities. As the world begins its recovery and gradual reopening in the face of the pandemic, traditional industries require energy, innovation and reinvention. ZCCM Investments Holdings Plc. – the mining conglomerate whose major shareholder is the Government of the Republic of Zambia – is signalling its intention to take on a leadership role in Zambia’s recovery with its announcement this week that they are partnering with a new strategic mining play – Array Metals. This company has an estimated inferred resource by JORC standards of 3 million tonnes of gold ore in Mumbwa, with 2.53.5grams per ton...
Over 1 Billion SMSs Sent since the Beginning of Lockdown in Nigeria
Sourced from allAfrica. Nigeria’s lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the usage of SMSs – the quintessential short message service used all across the world – as subscribers were discovered to have sent over 1-billion messages within the last month. Though this mass of messages was largely free, checks on some operators revealed the rate of how customers made use of the SMS platform to send messages to one another. For instance, a check on MTN showed that within the first five weeks of lockdown, where people all across the country began to work remotely. Over one billion text messages were sent by customers within the first four weeks of the pan-African telecom introducing a new free SMS package – the package allows MTN Nigeria subscribers across the country to send 1...
How to Adapt your Marketing Strategy for the COVID Era
Good marketing relies on a thorough understanding of your target market, but when much of what you knew about your customers is suddenly no longer relevant, a major shift is needed. With the onset of the coronavirus, almost every aspect of what was considered typical daily life was upended literally overnight – people confined to their homes, anxious about the future and their financial security. “The most important question you should be asking is: ‘How best can I connect with my customers during a crisis?’” says Gavin Knox-Grant, marketing guru and director of Karbon Media. “It’s not only during the pandemic that business will be different,” says Knox-Grant, “the way in which we all conduct business will be forever changed.” /* custom css */ .tdi_3_556.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.t...
How Technology Can Help Youth Unemployment in Nigeria
Sourced from Entrepreneur Platform. In the second quarter of 2018, youth unemployment peaked at 38% in Nigeria. Although there are no recent statistics, experts in the labour sector say the figure has surged year-on-year. Now with the worldwide reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has become direr as various sectors of the economy and industries stand greatly threatened including the financial and technology industry in Nigeria. Recently, companies like Andela, a software engineering talent company, laid off 135 of its staff across four locations in Africa including Nigeria. The Vanguard Nigeria reports that some financial institutions and commercial banks have had to also take measures like salary cuts to thwart mass layoffs. Another financial institution, Ren Money, r...
To Emerge from COVID-19 Businesses Will have to “Re-Think” Traditional Models
Sourced from Tech Loot Traditional models of business funding need a re-think if South Africa’s small businesses and entrepreneurs are to emerge from the financially crippling “winter of coronavirus” into a spring of growth and rejuvenation. Accepting that downturns, recessions and economic crises are inevitable, one needs to shift the focus into building “Zebra” companies – sustainable businesses with steady growth, strong balance sheets and cash flows, and able to withstand downturns – rather than “Unicorns that will die without the next round of funding”, says University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB) Senior Extraordinary Lecturer, Daniel Strauss. “In the past, we had a mindset of ‘or’ – we either had a traditional SMME that was funded through debt or we had a start-up that was f...
Platform Simplifies Access to COVID-19 Interventions in Nigeria
Sourced from Mail & Guardian. Beating Corona Nigeria, the country’s leading virtual intervention database has restructured its model to help disadvantaged Nigerians in need of interventions connect with the relevant non-profits. The platform itself kicked off last month, 9 April, and has recorded a massive amount of data. It continues to actively connect interveners to the people who need access to interventions. After recommendations to resolve the platform’s challenges with making interventions accessible, the database was pivoted towards a new model. With this pivot, the intervention database properly complements the core of the platform’s mission. Some of the major updates on the platform now allows for a search bar that can enable interventions to be easily found, a breakdown of a...
